with criminals, says:--“The really hardened, irreclaimable criminal will never commit a murder.... The most heinous of all offences--murder deliberately intended and planned before commission--is, ordinarily, the offspring of the passions of revenge and jealousy, or the outcome of social or political wrongs; and is more frequently the result of some derangement of the nobler instincts of human nature than traceable to its more debased orders or appetites.”[91] Again, Miss Carpenter, in her _Female Life in Prison_, wrote:--“Some women are less easy to tame than the creatures of the jungle.... And yet these women are not always in for the worst crimes: there are few, if any, murderers amongst them; they have been chiefly convicted of theft after theft, accompanied by violence.” These observations are entirely in accord with the results of criminal anthropology; the murderer belongs very frequently to the class of criminals by passion, the least anti-social of all, and is at other times frequently the subject of some morbid impulse, epileptic or insane. Perhaps the most powerful reason in favour of the probable disappearance of capital punishment is the humanising influence that would be exerted on the community generally. The unreasoning outbursts of ferocity in which, especially among young and emotional democracies, some morbid and distracted creature who fires at a political personage is hurried with glee to the scaffold, or some half-witted human thing who commits a rape is perhaps actually torn to pieces, are not wholesome manifestations of the social spirit. They are far less excusable than the deeds by which they are aroused, for the reason that they arise in more normally constituted persons. So long as capital punishment is legitimate there is, however, at least the appearance of an excuse for the development of these brutalising outbursts. All that is finest in civilisation is bound up with a self-restraint and humanity, as well as a more intelligent insight, which, while admitting a more chastened social reaction, makes ferocity impossible. Let us turn to the prison. During the last century a vast amount of care and enthusiasm, philanthropic and administrative, have been expended on the elaboration and development of prisons. It is needless to sketch the history of this development, which seems now to have come to a standstill; it has often been done, and is easily accessible. It is however very interesting and instructive to take note of the deliberate opinions expressed during the last few years, from various points of view, by those who have had the opportunity of studying most intimately the modern developed prison.